Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide, and Obligations Under International Law

Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide, and Obligations Under International Law

7 Dec 2018

The Global Justice Center has released the first comprehensive legal analysis of the gender-based crime of genocide in a report titled Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide, and Obligations Under International Law. The report highlights the central role that gender plays in the planning and commission of genocide and the role it must therefore play in efforts to prevent and punish the crime.

Men and boys and women and girls experience genocide differently based on societal understandings of their prescribed roles. In particular, the report’s authors note, the non-killing crimes of genocide* disproportionately impact women and girls, but have often been viewed as being outside the realm of genocide.

The authors conclude: "A failure to grapple with the intrinsic role that gender plays the crime of genocide has undercut the progressive framework for understanding and action offered by the Convention. One cannot prevent and punish what one does not recognize."

* The five acts that may constitute genocide if committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, are: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy; imposing measures to prevent births; forcibly transferring children to another group.